The Religious Education of Children.
by Robert Bird.
Author of "Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth," "Paul of Tarsus," etc.
Volume 14, 1903, pgs. 248-257
There comes a time in the experience of us all when we ask ourselves if we should not now begin to teach our child religion--that is, how to know and obey God, his Heavenly Father--how to be good. We have watched the sweet flower growing and expanding in the sun, and it is time he knew what is required of him. The service of innocence is to become a reasonable service. Some parents leave this to the Sunday school teacher or the governess; others will entrust it to no one, knowing that out of it are the issues of life, and that to hand over this sacred duty to someone else, because we have not the time, or the inclination, is to incur a grave responsibility. But this instruction is not difficult, if we confine ourselves to the few simple things which are essential, and leave theology to the professors of that science; for religion is with us every day, and we should be able to speak of it intelligibly and simply to our children.
What is your working method?
Have you ever, amid all your letter writing, invoice writing, essay writing, and, it may be, book writing, tried to write down what is that living thing swaying between right and wrong which regulates your daily life and settles what you should do and what you should avoid? In other words, what is your every-day household and counting house religion, as compared with your church religion? If you can lay your finger on this practical monitor which never deceives you and which you cannot deceive, you will get some idea of how far out upon the fringe of life lie your religious theories. Why do we not steal? Is it because we have read the commandment somewhere, or is it for some deeper reason? We are conscious that we must not steal, tell lies, or be cruel. That light of the knowledge of good and evil goes not out. Our conscience tells us. And God illumines our conscience, revealing His will to us. This guidance we get by asking, watching, waiting for it, as the semaphore sparkles in the sun.
Conscience our guide.
This then is the practical working method that every man, woman, and child has of doing good and avoiding evil in this world, and I know of no other guide given to man. To have a conscience void of offence toward God and man, was the daily exercise of Paul of Tarsus. If this be our practice, what then is our theory of religion? Would any of us, being English, begin to recite the Thirty-nine Articles as our answer, or being Scotch, repeat the Confession of Faith, in 33 chapters? If we were to approach our subject on these rails, we should start an enquiry, which, like the learning of the traditions and the commentaries by the young Rabbis, might well occupy us for the rest of our days. There is a shorter way to the heart of the matter, and, in following it, we must use words simple and easy to be understood, which the words of theology are not.
A simple religion required.
How to know and obey God must be a simple thing if little children are to learn it. I am no theologian, but a plain man speaking from the ranks of the laymen to parents in words of plain sense, and not loaded with meanings beyond the daily use and wont. Our children take only plain meanings out of plain words, and it seems to me that wresting words from their plain meaning is responsible for most of the religious disputes that have harassed Christianity.
We are free to choose whether we shall teach our children a simple or a complex religion, and you agree with me that to be understood we must express simple thoughts in simple terms. After all, it comes to this, whether we shall take our children to sit like Mary at the feet of Jesus and hear from Him the one thing needful, or take them to sit in turn at the feet of His followers to hear the same thing, accompanied by many things that are not needful for them; in the words of Peter speaking of Paul's epistles, "Things hard to be understood." I prefer to let theology wait until my child has learned the simple Christianity of Christ, and my first duty is to present Jesus to him in simplicity and truth, stopping short of all creeds and catechisms. In the debate on the English Education Bill in the House of Lords, the Bishop of Herelord used these words, "Where did you get your best religious teaching? At your mother's knee, where you learned the divine lessons of the life of Jesus." And that is what I wish you to teach your children.
I speak, therefore, to parents who earnestly desire to educate their children in the simple religion of Jesus, without addition and without deduction, such as you can easily explain, and shall attach, not their theological, but their every-day meanings as between man and man, and such as Jesus used to His disciples and they to Him.
When do you think religion begins with a child? That is, knowing and obeying God--being good. Jesus said that His words were the seed of God springing up into life. In every child there is this seed of God, this "Light which lightens every man that comes into the world." A grain of wheat in the ground springs into life. The life in it is a mystery, defying alike the microscope and the crucible. The seed of holiness in your child eludes all analysis, but it is there; too rare for human eye, too fine for human touch, but its fruits are like the miracle of the rising of innumerable grains in the field of wheat.
What is your standpoint?
Our attitude is one of reverence, as we approach this holy life in our children. And as the child's hand is put into ours for guidance, we ask ourselves, what is to be our standpoint towards this little one? Is it to be--
"But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home;
Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
Is it to be that of Jesus, as He looked upon the children of the fieldworkers and vine dressers, disporting themselves under the blue skies of Syria, and told their parents and the parents of all time that the children of this world are the children of His Kingdom? What mother's heart doubts this? A child in the midst, stands in a nimbus of heavenly light, laying a finger on the fathers lips, and a hand on the mother's heart.
The innocence of childhood precedes all rules and theories for being good. The act of breathing precedes the knowledge of how we breathe. Holiness precedes the knowledge of how to be good, and so we are pressed back in our enquiry, until we stand by the cradle of child life, where innocence and holiness hold out hands unspotted by the world.
Three stages of childhood.
There are three stages of childhood. The stage when the child can imitate, but cannot reason, and is taught mainly by example. The stage when he can both reason and imitate, but has not reached discretion, and then he is to be taught the life of Jesus. The stage of years of discretion, when he is to have the sayings and example of Jesus impressed upon him. When he reaches manhood, he will test this foundation of Jesus Christ on which he has built, and though rains and floods and winds may blow and beat upon that house, it will not fail, for it is founded upon a rock. During all this period, the influence of example is incalculable.
The first stage of a child's education is the age of innocence taught by example. This child from God, lying in your arms, is to be taught by you to know and obey God, to be good. Your attitude to the infant is that of Jesus. "See that you despise not one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."
Before your child can speak, he can answer smile for smile and frown for frown. His little spirit is weaving for himself a vesture of the colours around him, of the rainbow or of the cloud. A voice whispers to the mother as she sits by her child's cot, bidding her be true, for God is true, be loving as He is loving, be gentle, peaceable, self-denying, for she is as God to this little one, to be absorbed by him. And like Mary, she will find in her communings beside that little ark, searchings, prophecies, intimations, to be laid by in her heart, too deep for words, too sacred to be seen. Thus is she drawn by these little hands very near to God. Mothers have the care of the human race during the first years of its existence, and it is during this precious time that the clay is moulded and the twig bent. Could God have placed in your hands, ye mothers! a higher trust, or a mightier power? Not if He had made you the rulers of the thrones of this world would you have wielded a more imperial sway, for beside that cot your will is supreme, your example unquestioned. And whether it is in the wind shaken cottage, or the battlemented castle, every mother has a light upon her path, and may she not be neglectful of that heavenly vision!
Love begets love.
Love in us begets answering love in our children, drawing out that quality which is of the essence of God Himself. Patience begets patience, another of God's attributes. Gentleness, peace and truth, beget these divine things. As months pass into years, the spirit that looked forth from the windows becomes manifest in deed and word, and according as God's attributes of beauty and holiness have been moving to and fro about your child, will his soul be tinctured with these divine things. If he sees his parents wearing the attributes of God, the grace of God will be upon him, clothing him with a vesture beautiful as the temple purple, shining as the temple lamp.
And when will the sweet chords, waked in the hours of infancy, cease to vibrate in your child's heart? Never while memory holds and life endures. But some may say, that to walk in the grace of God before our children is too much to ask; a counsel of perfection; and my answer is this. If we are not prepared to be to our children the Christians which we profess to be, then we live a very poor life indeed.
To be holy as God is holy, to be pure as Christ is pure, is more than man can do, but it is not difficult to set our faces towards goodness, for it amounts to nothing more than living the daily life of not theoretical, but practical Christians--a much simpler affair. Every man has his ideal, avowed or concealed, and we must endeavour to show our children that it is possible to be the thing which we so earnestly desire them to be. It is no use to stand by the side of the path, pointing the way for their feet to go. We must walk in it.
Only one standard of goodness.
But some people who love the theories of religion more than its plain facts, tell us that these attributes of God and this grace of God in our children is not goodness, but something else. But wherever a ray of God is found, whether it be in the breast of a consecrated ecclesiastic or the heart of a little child, there is goodness. God's goodness does not depend upon the soil! Jesus has told us that God makes His sun to rise upon the good and upon the bad, and does not withhold His light from anyone. To tell us that the truth of a child comes not from the Spirit of all truth, is to juggle with words, and say that two and two are not always four.
I have asked parents to show forth the attributes of God in their daily life, that these may appear in their children. A mother's image is the first to be enshrined in that little temple, to live and shine there while life endures. In what colours is she to be arrayed? Radiant with the beauty of the rainbow, or draped in the sables of the cloud?
The angel child.
When a mother calls her child an angel, she means it with her whole heart, and not all the creeds of Christendom will convince her of the contrary. Her heart tells her the truth, for he is an angel, whose rosy feet have not yet trod the pathways of this world. Oh, happy home! in which the parents can say that they have earnestly striven to be what they desire their child to be, and in which they have seen him, like the young Christ at Nazareth, growing, with the grace of God upon him, during these years of infancy, so innocent, so happy, so fleeting, and yet of such deep importance.
In these years God should be presented to the child as Jesus presented Him to the common people who saw His face and heard His ringing voice; not as a God dwelling in thick darkness behind a veil of mystery; not as a God to whom sheep were to be slaughtered and sacrifice offered to propitiate His wrath. Jesus have us a fuller, truer, and dearer revelation. Prayers were no longer to be to Almighty Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts, but to our Father which art in heaven, of hallowed name; and when Jesus prayed, it was to thank His Father in heaven. Thus He showed God's real nature. "Be merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful." "If you forgive others, your Father will forgive you." "If you, being liable to sin, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" "He that keeps my commandments loves Me, and he that loves Me, shall be loved of My Father." "Love your enemies, that you may be the children of your Father." Christ's pictures of God are of a tender and loving Father. Who is more ready to forgive us than we are to forgive others, or to ask forgiveness; Who is not a hard or a harsh God, but tender and loving, and Whose commands are easy and Whose burden is light. So that we may tell our child, on the authority of Jesus, that God loves him, and will help him, and that he need have no fear of Him, or doubt of being able to be good.
The second stage.
I pass on. In the second stage of a child's religious education, his reasoning faculties awake, and he may be taught by both example and theory. In most children this is about eight years of age. If you think I am putting the age too high, test it. Read to a child of eight some reasoning or theory about religion, and ask what meaning he attaches to it, and I think you will agree with me that you must not seek for logic, or argument, or conclusions in a mind recently capable of believing that a doll thinks, and that fairies live in flowers. You have told your child of the love of God his Father in heaven, and of Jesus; you have told him how simple is goodness, the joy of doing right and the sorrow of doing wrong; you have taught him to lift his little hands in prayer to his Heavenly Father, and the dear child believes you utterly. The next step is to flood his mind with that vision of goodness, the Friend of little children, as the one example of holiness to be believed in and followed, dwelling at this stage on Christ's life more than on His sayings.
What was the attitude of Jesus to the little children about Him? For let us never forget that He was once an elder brother in that home at Nazareth, seeing deeper into the hearts of His little brothers and sisters than mortal eye could see, spending years of daily contact with them in a very practical and responsible way, taking the place of the dead father Joseph. His heart was as the heart of a mother towards children, filled with overflowing tenderness at one time, and the next, threatening punishment against anyone who should try to harm them. His teaching about the holiness of children was a heavenly revelation to the men of His time, and there are men among us now who never fail to see motes in the sunbeams of childhood. I can recall phrases of tenderness toward the children whom Jesus saw about Him:--I can see His dark eyes resting upon them, and kindling with love as He spoke, but I cannot recall one syllable to suggest that He saw sin in them. Children fulfilled His twin commands of loving and believing. Look at two of His meetings with children.
Jesus and the little children.
The first is in a fisherman's cottage by the side of the blue lake, and the children were those of the common people. Drawing a little child towards Him, He made him stand forth in the midst as a living, breathing example to His disciples, and these are His golden words:--"Unless you change and become as little children you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," meaning that if they did become as the little child before them, they would enter in. And taking the child in His arms, He added, "Whoever shall receive this little child in my name, receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives Him that sent Me. But whoever shall cause one of these little ones which believe in Me to stumble, it were better for him that a large millstone were hanged about his neck and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea." Was there anger in His voice as He uttered these terrible words? All the more terrible that they came from the lips of one so gentle. He may have seen glances of incredulity amongst His disciples, for He added: "See that you despise not one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."
If someone had said to Him, "Yes, teacher, but you forget that they are born in sin, and are children of wrath," we can imagine what His answer would have been.
The next scene is in the Perea, in springtime when the leaves are on the trees. He is on His way to the fords of Jordan at Jericho, and He will never return. The dark-eyed country women have drawn near, with the simple petition, "Before Thou goest, bless our children." Sitting in the shade of a tree by the way-side, He waited, and they thronged Him. Again His disciples could not see in these common children what Jesus saw, for they forbade them to come, and this is His golden saying, rising above all Creeds and Catechisms, uttered in tones of indignation, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." What did these plain words mean to these simple people, and to the wondering disciples standing by, and what do they mean to us, considered in a common-sense way? They meant that these little ones of field, and garden, and dusty highway, were in Christ's Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. Men strive to enter in, but the little ones are born within the gate. But something in the look of the men about Him caused Jesus to add, "Truly I tell you, whoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no way enter therein," and He took them in His arms and blessed them.
We have heard of Him saying, "Whoever shall receive one of these little children in My name receives Me, and whosever receives Me, receives not only Me, but God who sent Me." One of these little children! these children of the common peasantry, standing in the sunshine of the road in sight of them all, brought away from their games to see the young prophet! Who dare to fling the first stone at them, for Jesus took them in His arms and blessed them, and he will take our children also, for they, too, are of his Kingdom. These words of Jesus drop like honey into the hearts of all mothers with sweetening and strengthening for all time. Be assured that if Jesus thought these children of the country people were under the wrath of God, doing evil, and that continually, as one catechism says, He would not have spoken as He did.
John, the beloved disciple, who saw with human eye the scenes which I have described, and whose heart was close to the heart of the Master, said years afterwards, "I write to you, little children, because you have God." And let every mother say to her child, "I speak to you, my child, because you have God," and so strengthen her heart for the simple task of teaching him to know God more, and obey Him better.
Christ's standpoint.
I have shown Christ's attitude, which will be yours, of goodness in your children, with the possibilities of evil, increasing as the child comes more into contact with the world. At this early age you will fortify your child's heart by telling him that he is loved by his Father in Heaven, you will unfold in short bits at a time the wonderful story of the life of the Holy One, the Son of God, Who came into this world to save men from their own wickedness. Believe me, the holiness of your child is not a beautiful deception conceived for the purpose of entrapping mothers into the belief that their lisping children are sinless. If you doubt it, look at your child, as he sleeps on his pillow with eyes sealed and cheeks flushed, his lips parted with imperceptible breathing, and ask yourself if you know of a sight more lovely, more beautiful, more holy in this wide world than a little child asleep. The answer of your heart is the answer of Jesus. In plain language, your sweet child begins life with a fair start, and not weighted down with the sin of someone else. From earliest hours he has visions of God without a cloud, and what mother doubts it as she stand with a listening ear, an ear sealed to everything but the words of Jesus her Master-stands as these peasant women stood on that country road so long ago, seeing Him and believing Him?
(To be continued.)
Proofread by LNL, Dec. 2008